No way out
“nothing in the air but
clouds. nothing in the air but
rain. each man’s life too short to
find meaning and
all the books almost a
waste.” — Charles Bukowski from the poem people as flowers
Earthbound, we’re born, we live a little and then we die.
In between, we try our best to make sense of the swirl of emotion, grief, anger, fear and (sometimes) love.
But to the separate self (i.e. the ‘I’ or ‘me’) it’s never quite enough. Oh, sure, there are rare glimpses of nirvana, bliss or happiness but as is the human condition, it never lasts.
It’s no wonder then that we seek solace in religion, psychotherapy, drugs, drink, work (as a distraction) and anything to keep us from having to face our deepest fears.
But it doesn’t end there. Some people seek out a guru or New Age therapy and hope that if they’re earnest enough and follow their teacher’s prognostications that they too can find nirvana or whatever label is ascribed to some higher state.
I know it’s hackneyed but when you hear the aphorism ‘what you’re seeking, you already are’, it’s impossible, on the dualistic level, to appreciate what that truly means. It’s like looking right through yourself and hoping that somehow you’ll arrive at some promised state of bliss-consciousness.
The truth is — my truth that is — you’ll never escape the idea that there is a separate self until you realise that that’s simply a product of a) a contraction of some ‘form’ soon after we’re born (i.e. we start to feel there is a ‘me’ in here and everything else out there) and b) the conditioning apropos of words, ideas and labels, which never touch the thing they’re trying to describe.
Imagine, instead, that there was no way to describe any of this save to say that it was:
nothing appearing as everything
emptiness appearing as fullness
and subject appearing as object.
And there is no try (as Bukowski would have said) but simply this. Simply this happening — a pristine moment. Not in time — that’s a chimera; and there is no one (i.e. you) able to apprehend any of it.
I realise and have realised since the first time I came across this message that these words can never, ever touch the indescribable. They’re not capable of getting anywhere near to it. And there is no practice, technique, or tip sheet that can be employed or deployed. And that’s a real bummer for the separate me which feeds off of and is fuelled by knowing and doing, meaning and purpose, and always a sense that there is somewhere to get to.
In the end, and this pleases me greatly, there is nothing on offer here but a few words crafted on the back of no-thing appearing as everything.
Take care.
Julian